Tuesday, February 12, 2008

You've Got Mail

This past weekend we did a first. The planets all aligned. We actually had a nowhere-to-be, nothing-to-do Saturday morning. While at Lowes earlier in the week, I noticed a sign for Kid's Clinics. So feeling adventurous and free my husband and I, along with our three kids plus an extra kid friend, hopped in the van and headed for Lowes to build Valentine mailboxes. I brought my camera thinking I would capture some onsite building. But that could have meant sacrificing one of the 40 fingers we were trying to keep our eyes on. As a result, no pix exist from the actual clinic...too many hammers flying around. Believe me.

We completed four really cute Valentine mailboxes at the store. As we were leaving, the Lowes people handed out leftover kits from past clinics. We brought back home lots of projects and spent the rest of Saturday happily hammering away in our garage/workshop. If you have a Lowes around and have never been to a kid's clinic, I highly recommend checking it out. The kids get aprons and a badge (kind of like brownies or cub scouts) for each project they complete. And it's all free!

The best part about it all is the sense of pride and accomplishment that kids get from actually building and constructing wood projects. There is big time satisfaction that comes with swinging a real hammer—with adult supervision of course. The next clinic around here is on February 23rd. We're pretty excited about going again as we'll be building squirrel feeders. And boy oh boy have we got squirrels to feed.

While the Lowes mailboxes were very cute, they won't work for collecting Valentines at school in a couple of days. We need larger enclosed type boxes to hold all of those love notes and candy attachments from classmates. I made the mailboxes above for my school age kids out of recycled dry food boxes. I covered the boxes with fabric and embellished with felt scraps, ribbon and lace. The openings at the tops are lined with fake fur (Brendan's) and fabric (Cara's) to prevent peeking. Right now we're working on the task of addressing cards to friends and adhering candy to the envelopes. Actually Cara finished this activity in an afternoon some time ago. Brendan can handle about five cards per night so we're still working to complete his class list. Ahhhh...the excitement of Valentines Day....and hang tight squirrels, you'll have your treats—in your very own feeders (no stealing from the birds)—in a week or so.